Even Death Won’t Stop the Debt Collectors – 26th Edition

If your spouse, sibling, child, or parent dies owing a credit card company, or even his or her phone bill, you’re under no legal obligation to pay that bill. But that won’t stop the debt collectors from trying to collect from you.

Debt collectors have always been able to file claims against estates in probate courts – sometimes truthfully, and sometimes with trumped-up charges that only the deceased would know were false.

But for those who die without enough assets to require a formal probate, the human touch is used to attempt collection.

A company called DCM Services in Minneapolis is just one of many that specializes in extracting money from the bereaved. Their clients include companies in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications, and health care.

DCM trains their new hires for 3 weeks in what the company calls “empathetic active listening,” so that they’ll be prepared to sound like they care while they work to collect money you don’t owe. They’ll even transfer the call to a grief counselor if the person appears to be consumed with denial or anger. Then they call back the next week.
By articlesnatch.com

Originally posted 2009-03-28 16:56:59.